Amar Singh next in Arvind Kejriwal’s line of fire?

The former Samajwadi Party leader was recently given a clean chit by the UP police in a money laundering case allegedly involving Rs 500 crore.

India Against Corruption activist Arvind Kejriwal’s next target could be Amar Singh. The former Samajwadi Party leader was recently given a clean chit by the UP police in a money laundering case allegedly involving Rs 500 crore. The UP government’s move to let Amar Singh off the hook has also sparked off speculation that he might return to the SP, though sources in the party have denied any such move.

The complainant in the matter, Shivakant Tripathi of Kanpur, told reporters that an IAC activist had contacted him on behalf of Kejriwal asking about the details of the case and the circumstances under which the Kanpur police had filed its final report in court. “Mulayam has withdrawn the case against Amar Singh. Next, he will do the same in Salman Khurshid’s case so that the UPA government closed the DA case against him (Mulayam),” Kejriwal said on Saturday. Tripathi will file his objections to the closure report in the Kanpur district court on Monday.

What has set the political circles abuzz here is the cursory manner in which the police have closed the case against Amar Singh. The inquiry into the case was surreptitiously transferred from the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) to the Kanpur police on October 28, and on November 1, the Circle Officer (CO) handling the case filed the final report (FR) in a local court saying there was no evidence against Amar Singh to pursue the money laundering case further. “Three years of investigation by the EOW was consigned to the dustbin in three days by the Kanpur police,” was how a senior police official summarized the episode.

Tripathi had lodged the case against Amar Singh at the Babupurwa police station of Kanpur in October 2009. In the FIR, he had alleged that Amar Singh was running a web of 55 shell companies and had channelized black money of over Rs 500 crore through them. The case was handed over to the EOW in November 2009. The EOW had recorded statements of 24 alleged directors of these shell companies, and of about a hundred other people in this case. Sources say most of the “directors” denied having any knowledge of these companies or the transactions of black money done in their name.

Tripathi said he had submitted evidence running into 2,000 pages to the court that the 55 shell companies were finally amalgamated into two firms – Pankaja Arts of which Amar Singh’s wife Pankaja was chairman, and M/s Sarvottam headed by Singh himself.